Doré wood cuttings

The Year of Our Lord 1866 witnessed the publication of a remarkable two-volume French-language folio edition of the Holy Scriptures, translated from the Vulgate, as La Grande Bible de Tours. And for this worthy and weighty tome, the French artist Paul Gustave Louis Christophe Doré produced 241 woodcuts illustrating the sacred texts.

They are gorgeous and immensely popular works of art, dripping with drama and heavy with doom. Published simultaneously in the UK, Doré’s illustrations of the Tours Bible both influenced and were influenced by the Victorian Age (1837-1901). His Old Testament scenes focus on massacres and murderers; his New Testament on sentiment and sapience. He seems to have enjoyed high drama all around. We all know how the lurid bits of the Bible keep the rest of it arresting.

Over the course of the following year, and by special request, we will take a monthly look at just under a dozen of these woodcuts corresponding to the Passion of the Christ; paying close attention both to the versus upon which each illustration has been based and also to the artist’s own take on the events depicted therein—his personal translation, as it were. Like as not, you know his works, even if you weren’t aware of his name. Doré still proves persistently popular today.

Every act of translation must needs be an interpretation. No matter how closely we hew to the grammar and meaning of the original, choices have to be made, attempting to stay true to the source material whilst simultaneously expressing the message in a new and different medium. This is true even for the relatively straightforward task of taking the Scriptures from Latin into French—despite the fact that French at heart is really just bad Latin.

We shall hold the original text in one hand and Doré’s translation in the other. We shall look to the Bible, to history, and to art. And we shall trust in the Spirit ever to incarnate anew the Logos, the eternal Word and Son of God, that we may encounter Him in our own age, in our own way.

Or at the very least, we’ll see some pretty pictures.

For more images: Doré Bible Gallery 

By: Reverend Sir Knight Ryan Stout